You know the story. You have a few intuitions. You propose a few theories that fit them. It’s a living. Of course, things are more complicated than this. We are sensitive to counterexamples raised by others and wish to accommodate or explain away an ever-wider base of intuitive starting points. And a great deal of the action occurs in rational reflection that can alter what is intuitive, and in theorizing that overturns formerly justified beliefs and moves us to new justified (...) beliefs. Details aside, this method in ethics and elsewhere—of first relying on intuitions to form justified beliefs, and subsequently using best-fit (or reflective equilibrium) theorizing on all justified beliefs to move to other justified beliefs—has received a lot of critical attention lately. But it is not a bad method. It is a good method caught in a bad relationship. For its presumptive metaethical companion, realism, would have us believe that intuitions support beliefs about real, stance-independent facts of the matter. That strikes many as dubious. After sorting through some relevant concerns in this vicinity, I argue that the solution is not to reject intuitional methods but to embrace quasi-realism. (shrink)

The present essay offers a sketch of a philosophy of value, what I shall here refer to as ‘ethical instrumentalism.’ My primary aim is to say just what this view involves and what its commitments are. In the course of doing so, I find it necessary to distinguish this view from another with which it shares a common basis and which, in reference to its most influential proponent, I refer to as ‘Humeanism.’ A second, more general, aim is to make (...) plausible the idea that, given the common basis, ethical instrumentalism provides a more compelling picture of the philosophy of value than Humeanism does. (shrink)

In this paper I consider recent developments in neo-pragmatism, and in particular the degree of convergence between such approaches and those placing greater emphasis on truth and truth-makers. I urge that although a global pragmatism has its merits, it by no means closes the space for a more Wittgensteinian, finer-grained, approach to the diversity of functions served by modal, causal, moral, or other modes of thought.

What is at stake in the dispute between moral objectivism and subjectivism is how we are to give a rational grounding to ethical first principles or basic commitments. The search is for an explanation of what if anything makes any commitments good. Subjectivisms such as Blackburn's quasi‐realism can give any set of commitments no ‘rational grounding’ in this sense except in considerations about internal consistency. But this is inadequate. Internal consistency is not sufficient for ethical rationality, since a set of (...) obviously bad commitments could be internally consistent. Nor is it necessary, since a set of obviously good commitments could be internally inconsistent. I therefore argue for an objectivist view of the grounding of commitments, taking them to be attitudes which get their rationality, or lack of it, from their responsiveness to natural human needs and well‐being. Since this view is objectivist, it avoids the problems which face subjectivism. (shrink)

Different versions of moral projectivism are delineated: minimal, metaphysical, nihilistic, and noncognitivist. Minimal projectivism (the focus of this paper) is the conjunction of two subtheses: (1) that we experience morality as an objective aspect of the world and (2) that this experience has its origin in an affective attitude (e.g., an emotion) rather than in perceptual faculties. Both are empirical claims and must be tested as such. This paper does not offer ideas on any specific test procedures, but rather undertakes (...) the important preliminary task of clarifying the content of these subtheses (e.g., what is meant by "objective"? what is meant by "experience"?). Finally, attention is given to the relation between (a) acknowledging that the projectivist account might be true of a token moral judgment and (b) maintaining moral projectivism to be true as a general thesis. (shrink)

This paper is a reply to Simon Blackburn's 'Is Objective Moral Justification Possible on a Quasi-realist Foundation?' Inquiry 42 (1999), pp. 213-28. Blackburn attempts to show how his version of non-cognitivism - quasi-realist projectivism - can evade the threat of ethical relativism, the thought that all ways of living are as ethically good as each other and every ethical judgment is as ethically true as any other. He further attempts to show that his position is superior in this respect (...) to, amongst other accounts, sensibility theory (or 'secondary quality' theory). According to Blackburn, sensibility theory succumbs easily to the relativistic challenge because it depends on some 'substantive' notion of truth. It is agreed with Blackburn that the threat of relativism is less of a threat to him than at first appears, although I think that it retains some menace, but not agreed that sensibility theorists cannot also counter the threat of relativism (although, again, ethical relativism retains some menace in the face of the sensibility theorist's reply). The point is that the threat of ethical relativism depends less on truth than Blackburn supposes. Thus sensibility theorists can counter ethical relativism in much the same way that quasi-realist projectivists can. (shrink)

I try out a tentative hypothesis in speculative philosophy, by sketching a theory of value modelled on John Locke's theory of acquisition. I argue that this theory has all the advantages of Locke's theory of acquisition, but few of its disadvantages. Moreover, it allows us to reconcile two attractive, but apparently incompatible, ideas about value: the real-value idea (that animals, plants, artifacts, and landscapes really are valuable) and the subject-dependence idea (that things have value only in relation to experiencing subjects). (...) As a theory of value, it may be interesting in its own right, but I also argue that it may be of particular interest to theists. (shrink)

This essay offers a critical appraisal of some claims recently advanced by Crispin Wright and others in support of a response-dispositional (RD) approach to issues in epistemology, ethics, political theory, and philosophy of the social sciences. These claims take a lead from Plato's discussion of the status of moral value-judgements in the Euthyphro and from Locke's account of 'secondary qualities' such as colour, texture and taste. The idea is that a suitably specified description of best opinion (or optimal response) for (...) some given area of discourse will provide all that is needed in the way of objectivity while avoiding the problems raised by anti-realists like Michael Dummett with respect to the existence of truth-values that transcend our utmost powers of recognition or verification. I focus on three main areas - mathematics, morals and constitutional law - and argue that an RD approach falls short in certain crucial respects. That is to say, it works out either as a trivial (tautological) claim to the effect that 'best judgement' cannot - per definiens - diverge from truth under conditions of idealized epistemic warrant, or as an approach that leans strongly towards the anti-realist side of the argument. Thus the promised 'third way' - here as in other present-day contexts of debate - most often carries no substantive implications for our thinking about truth, moral virtue, or justice. Elsewhere, especially when applied to juridical matters, it lays chief stress on the truth-constitutive role of human judgements or responses, and hence the impossibility of appealing to standards of natural justice beyond some existing highest authority or source of constitutional warrant. This point is made with specific reference to recent events surrounding the 'election' (or leverage-into-office) of President George W. Bush. In such cases, I conclude, an RD approach would tend strongly to endorse the view that 'best opinion' - as enshrined, say, in the deliverance of US Supreme Court justices - is the furthest we can get towards an adequate assessment of the moral and political issues. Key Words: anti-realism  ethics  judgement  mathematics  political theory  realism  response-dependence. (shrink)

The subject of this paper is sentimentalism. In broad terms this is the view that value concepts, moral concepts, practical reasons—some or all of these—can be analysed in terms of feeling, sentiment or emotion. More specifically, the paper discusses the following theses: (i) there are reasons to feel (‘evaluative’ reasons) that are not reducible to practical or epistemic reasons (ii) value is analysable in terms of these reasons to feel. (iii) all practical reasons are in one way or another grounded (...) in evaluative reasons. (i) and (ii) are accepted while (iii) is rejected. (shrink)

Simon Blackburn defends a 'quasi-realist' view intended to preserve much of what realists want to say about moral discourse. According to error theory, moral discourse is committed to indefensible metaphysical assumptions. Quasi-realism seems to preserve ontological frugality, attributing no mistaken commitments to our moral practices. In order to make good this claim, quasi-realism must show that (a) the seemingly realist features of the 'surface grammar' of moral discourse can be made compatible with projectivism; and (b) certain realist-sounding statements which we (...) might use in describing the nature of our moral commitments can be understood in projectivist terms. Much attention has been devoted to whether quasi-realism can deliver (a). I raise an important difficulty with regard to (b). (shrink)

Expressivism's problem in solving the Frege/Geach problem concerning unasserted contexts is evaluated in the light of Blackburn's own methodological commitment to assessing philosophical theories in terms of costs and benefits, notably quasi-realism's aim of minimising the ontological commitments of a broadly naturalistic worldview. The problem emerges when a competitor theory can explain the same phenomena at lower cost: the minimalist about truth has no problem with unasserted contexts whereas the quasi-realist/expressivist package does. However, this form of projectivism is supposed to (...) be a local and contrastive thesis or the central metaphor of projection makes no sense. So in competition with minimalism, projectivism must - at least for non-contested areas of thought and language - presuppose non-minimal truth. This casts new light on Blackburn's proposal globally to revise the relations between logic and truth so as to model ethical discourse as tracking a notion of commitment to contents that can be either attitudinal or truh evaluable. Why globally revise logic, in order solely to explain the problem of unasserted contexts, when a rival view can do so much better according to the standards set by the quasi-realist? Why do so when a notion of non-minimal truth and a classical explanation of logic are already available to you, given the local and contrastive claims of quasi-realism? (shrink)

Acceptance of Humean Supervenience and thereductive Humean analyses that entail it leadsto a litany of inadequately explained conflictswith our intuitions regarding laws andpossibilities. However, the non-reductiveHumeanism developed here, on which law claimsare understood as normative rather than factstating, can accommodate those intuitions. Rational constraints on such norms provide aset of consistency relations that ground asemantics formulated in terms offactual-normative worlds, solving theFrege-Geach problem of construing unassertedcontexts. This set of factual-normative worldsincludes exactly the intuitive sets ofnomologically possible worlds associated witheach possible (...) set of laws. The extension ofthe semantics to counterfactual and subjunctiveconditionals is sketched. Potential objectionsinvolving subjectivity, mind-dependence, andnon-factuality are discussed. (shrink)